Pride Month Profile: Architect, Designer, and Visionary, Eileen Gray
E-1027 House, French Riviera villa, designed in 1929 by Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici, Photo: Manuel Bought
“To create, one must first question everything.” Eileen Gray
June is Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community, and COUPAR profiles Modernist architect, designer, visionary, and openly bisexual Eileen Gray (1878-1976). Born into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, she grew up between her mother Eveleen Pounden Gray's ancestral estate in Ireland and a London townhouse in The Boltons. Her father, James MacLaren Smith, was a Scottish landscape painter who took his daughter on painting tours in Italy and Switzerland. Gray studied painting at London's Slade School of Fine Art but soon sought another avenue for her creativity. Visiting Paris for the first time, she went to L'Exposition Universelle and saw the work of Glasgow architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who she admired.
Eileen Gray, Black lacquered folding screen, 28 wood panels attached to steel rods, 1923, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Gray moved to Paris in 1902 and lived in France for the rest of her life. There, she became the first Western practitioner of Asian lacquer, learning from Japanese sculptor and lacquer specialist Seizo Sugawara. Before opening a lacquer studio with Sugawara, she created lacquered screens, architectural paneling, and furnishings in her bathroom to achieve the proper humidity. In 1910, Gray set up a workshop for carpets and wallhangings. A Parisian shop, Galerie Jean Désert, followed in 1922, where she sold her Modernist furnishings, exhibited art, and offered interior design services. Her clients included the Maharajah of Indore, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Elsa Schiaparelli. She enjoyed Jazz Age Paris during this time and the lesbian demimonde, frequenting Natalie Barney's salons.
Eileen Gray, Chambre à coucher boudoir pour Monte-Carlo,1923, Gouache, crayon, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
Gray was the first woman in Paris to obtain a driver's license. She drove her roadster along the Champs-Elysée with her lover, Damia, and the French nightclub singer's pet panther. After they broke up, Gray became involved with Jean Badovici, a Romanian architect. From 1926-29, he assisted her in designing and building an avant-garde International Style villa in the South of France called E1027. She juxtaposed the building's clean, controlled lines with the wild, coastal rocks of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. On the interior, white walls showcased Gray's Modernist furnishings and accessories. She and Badovici were happy there for a few years until Le Corbusier visited, leaving behind eight explicitly sexual murals, which he sometimes painted in the nude. When he refused to remove them, Gray left and never returned.
